Monthly Archives: May 2013

This is the first installment of this essay introduces one part of five areas of inquiry related to the process of evaluation and ideas for my new project.

This essay is an attempt at picturing the development of an idea for a work in progress I am calling: Mapping without Mapping, Psychological Occupation Verses Real Estate. The project started with an interest in investigating into the geographical history of the American presence (official and unofficial), and includes addressing more contemporary issues related to being non-Korean, in Korea. However as time has passed it has become more broadly a study into the concepts of place, in the sense of both belonging and creating. At this point this project is highly theoretical, and this essay is one part of an effort to respond to my previous works, in an attempt to understand, and address my prior intentions and to some degree alter my methodology. This text is broken into five parts that lace together inquiries and objects from different sources, existing in works completed or ideas left hanging. Here I hope to more cogently interrogate ideas of space and site for this future work; outline the project’s parameters to date, such as notes, image ideas; express some ideas on mapping; define space and place as related to this project, while making an inquiry into the theoretical differences between place and space.

An Investigative Search of Previously Used Space and Sites

In relation to a presence like the United States in Korea three terms came to mind as I thought through my subject: stains – starting points – soil. These words reflect critical and visceral ways of thinking; and also how the waters get muddy. We don’t hear it much anymore, but driving much of American exceptionalism is the idea of manifest destiny. In general nationalism is driven by the idea that there is something distinct held within borders drawn. So I am seeking a sensitive address to such issues—ways to look at this idea of entering space metaphorically, psychologically and materially. These distinctions are crucial, especially when considering how one culture rests in, resists or rejects another.

Recall, this is a work in progress and this essay is a part of the progress of realizing the work. So I’ve often thought this effort here is a little like the work of performance artist/monologist/actor Spalding Gray, in that I am setting out to tell you something but that while I am telling you I will never get there: to my point, and instead I will make another point, perhaps equal to my intended, but perhaps not, but that it will all lead to an anxious attempt at coherence. That I suppose is the nature of defining something.

Crucial to this and all my work, I have been concerned with site specificity since I was an undergraduate in the 1980s when I was asked to make an architectural model and place in a context—in Central Park. The directions: seek scale and moorings that could hold your model so as to not look artificial or outsized led initially to an indirect search for the place in which art happens. Then one more directly about place formed of space. There have been, including this first, at least nine moments, some of which are no longer available or merit description; however it was in the text that site really took hold. In book arts, I realized a space that was portable and specific. Later an exhibition Outside (1990) in the woods allowed the idea of sighting to arise. Meaning that rather than announcing itself as art, the value of the random person seeing the work outside of the institution began to form. This inclination towards the discreet gesture, a thing present, but only accounted for by those who found it, drove my projects EveryDaySky (2000-2002) and Occurrence

Occurrence: view from east along sidewalk (2000)

(2000). Both of these projects are defined by how site and sighting interacted. Of course it can be said of any work, but when these works were activated/realized by seeing them, it was in the context of the passage way the sidewalk or the street, not places where one then expected to find art. Therefore recognition and access are defining characteristics of both works. EveryDaySky was also concerned with memory of non-events. Using

Occurrence: view from south across sidewalk (2000)

a camera to photograph the sky everyday for a year, and then a year later upload that image to the web, I was commenting on the transfer and slippage of memory related to days and time, and its mediation through the apparatus. My last sited project, re:location (2004-2005), directly utilized sight and the apparatus to document a space. Rather than take photographs I scanned Dogmatic, like eyes brushing across much of its surfaces, with a flatbed scanner. The importance of re:location was in its making. It was perhaps a failure in its later incarnation as an installation of printed images. Still, the transfer of space into information, as a map is important to my next work.

These projects are now diagrams for siting and the sighting of work, and most, if not all, were denials of the institution. My reasoning then centered on capitalism’s grip, and my want to make works that functionally were only gifts, exchange without currency. I’m still interested in this as a strategy of resistance, yet I feel this work needs to be as immaterial as possible for many reasons. So, as I’ve gathered information for this new project I have found myself asking: how to make a map without making a map. Clearly these earlier works are maps that are not maps, but they come with copious amounts of materials.As well, this work, that I am prefiguring, is very much about institutional power, power great enough to deny its own existence. So here the intersection of mapping and the denial by the institution is much like a double negative, or rather a Mobius strip, folding back onto itself without end.

Shin Sung Ran, independent curator and writer, wrote her Korean art history MA, A Study of the Paintings by Shin Myeongyeon (1809-1886), at Hongik University. She was formerly the lead curator at the Peace Museum’s space99. Currently she is a lecturer at the Dongduk Woman’s University and Sejong University where she teaches the history of Korean art history and oriental art history. Shin has also written for the Korean publications Monthly Art, and article, as well her thesis was published in Misulsa Yeongu (월간미술). In addition to teaching, she was recently named curator of exhibitions for the office of Nam Yun In Soon, a member of the National Assembly. When I first met Shin in the spring of 2011, she was lead curator at space99 (or space goo goo as it is known). The exhibition The Eye of the Needle was on view in the gallery. I was impressed by both political nature of the show and the quality of the work supporting its framework. Shin’s curatorial efforts, which are unapologetically political, have focused on tough issues like migrant workers, and state violence. Since, leaving space99 Shin has been occupied with teaching and working with other likeminded cultural producers in creating a dialog about the contemporary definition of Korean art.

When we sat down last winter (January 2012) our discussion focused on art making in Korea, its history, identifications, motives and zeitgeists; how art and culture diverge for the public and Shin’s desire for art to part of public culture, and in turn receive the support of the public.

The following interview questions, which where answered via email, are based on the conversation we had in January 2012.

Julia Marsh: Your experience working at space99 was very political and focused on social issues of the underserved or overlooked. Can you speak about how you went from being an art history major focusing on oriental flower painting to being involved in such murky waters?

Shin Sung Ran: Many people are curious about the fact that after studying artists who mainly painted flowers and birds during the Joseon dynasty I then worked for space99 where the exhibitions dealt with political and social issues.

After western modernization, like the economic development plan, Korean contemporary art has been changed in the way it chases western art trends, not just for form and content, but also in the spirit of this art, under the premise of “fitting in the international scene.” Outside of the art world, this assimilation is a general problem within Korean society, as well as a phenomenon appearing all over Asia. Instead, I think it is important to escape cultural subservience by finding out what are the dynamic and drives of Korean indigenous culture. For these reasons in grad school I studied the pre-modern art of the Joseon dynasty, which held as its criteria in general the native beauty of Korea. More specifically I selected nineteenth century flower and bird paintings, which were the leading genres of this era of change from traditional to modern, in order to comprehend the adaptation of culture in our history. And so while I was working at an exhibition space for contemporary art, I continue to participate in seminars on philosophy and culture in Eastern classics.

Because I started my career as an intern for the National Museum of Contemporary Art, and this being different from my research, I needed to understand the changes and the essence of contemporary art. After this initial stage, I chose to work at space99 where I could pursue investigating the relation between the society and art without having to deal with the burdens of commercial galleries and public museums, such as marketability or governmental controls. The low budget and the complicated identity of the space, on the other hand, presented difficulties for the artworks and also for publicizing social movement organizations. But great accomplishments were made, which only this space could have achieved. As a space focused on such egalitarian dynamics, it was possible to experiment with various sociopolitical art forms focused on minorities, while seeking solidarity for these groups.So even for me, it is hard to directly connect my interest in Korean traditional culture and a career started at the National Museum of Contemporary Art and space99. But I think these are leading me to find my ground as a curator.

JM: Did working in such a political context alter your ability to think of art as discrete and separate from other more abstract social pressures?

SSR: There are no major changes. I am not attached to a certain form of art. I am just more interested in the social role of art that captures and investigates the voices of the people’s life.

JM: Having worked for the Peace Museum, which is not a typical museum organization in that its mission is to promote peace and advocate for non-violence, in your estimation what is the role of the curator in exhibitions and society?

SSR: space99 is an exhibition space, but also a space that serves the peace movement as a nonprofit social organization. The concentrated pursuit of a certain cause may limit the autonomy of art. So, my most important role was to create an environment that did not overwhelm the art under any great premise, but rather aggrandized the work’s content, in a situation where art and the peace movement desire to negate violence and form a balanced society.

The second part I focused on was solidarity. For example, when I was handling an exhibition about labor issues, in order to avoid any solely ideological approaches, I created an actual bridge between the artists and the workers in the field, so the artists could become aware of the reality and circumstances of the laborers. This role was only possible because the Peace Museum, an organization that wants to remember and accord the agony in society, was already equipped with a broad social network. I think it is a very important job to connect art and society, which have different methods to express the experiences of life in society.

JM: When we met you spoke about the identification of Korean artist with past eras. Can you elaborate on how Korean artists do or do not identify or reflect the past in their attitude and/or work?

SSR: Some contemporary Korean artists are using the materials or methods that were used in traditional arts in new ways. It is very inspiring to see artists bringing traditional art into the ongoing process of making and to see such methods progressing. But just as Western culture can sometimes see Eastern art in the guise of the orientalism, many Korean artists also regard their traditions in terms of otherness and nostalgia, and only utilize its materials or methods. Beyond just taking the materials and the methods, I want to see artwork made with profound thought, which synthesizing the artistry, as well as using Korean thought and lifestyle, which are fading due to their collision with westernization.

JM:You spoke about finding a way for art to be as interesting to people as sports or TV. How do you conceive of that ever happening?

SSR:Art, for sure, is different from the other public media. Art, till now, is not as accessible or easy as TV dramas and sports. For most people, art is a very specific realm made only for a minority. Especially with its market image as a luxury item of personal preference, art has remained a marker of refined taste of the upper class within the socioeconomic structure. Recently the number of people looking at art has grown, obvious in the many newly opened galleries, but we cannot deny this interest also reflects a desire to be upwardly mobile. The artworks that are generally considered for the public are just products of marketing that combine desire and consumption.

An important question to ponder about the foundations of art is whether art should be popular. But if we look at this within the greater notion that art represents the aesthetics of each era, we must be led then to the question: who does art represent today? This idea is related to zeitgeist, which changes with every era. After the modern era, it is true that the class who led and built the society has increased in numbers. And we can’t deny that our future will be more varied and include the will of many people. Here, I am interested in what social role there is for art. I think artworks that approach the diversity of people’s lives and their voices, and create more varied stories and ideas, will accomplish an artistic achievement, and also change the definition of what is art.

So I have paid great attention to public and community-based art, as well as the socio-political art that concerns social minorities who are alienated from art. Beyond the enlightenment and the propagandistic, I long for art that has both the artist’s contemplation and introspection, which can also reach more people in order to invigorate their lives.

JM:Since art remains a specialized area of expertise, what are the ways that artist and curators alike can and undermine the hegemonic role of capital in the exchange of art or more essentially ideas?

SSR: Capital has absolute power over art. The commercialization of the general art world has spread rapidly to include the artworks of younger artists just entering the market, which has mainly been selling the works of older artists. Buyers now want art as an investment, which can be later sold as a commercial good; although it hasn’t been that long since this desire permeated the art world, more than a cultural asset, art now symbolizes highly developed taste or wealth. It can be said that galleries, critics, press and museums have played a major role in this transition.

Fundamentally speaking, the order of this process includes that first favorable review by a critic, followed by fame, and finally the sale of the artwork, and all are very essential for the artist to make a living. However, if the process leans towards commercialism, it creates a dilemma for any producer, whether an artist or a designer of stylish goods. As a curator, I have a major concern about this boundary. It is like a lonely tightrope walk for the artist to live without being swayed by the market. To make valuable contributions free from market forces there needs to be a special support in capitalist societies. It is imperative to have governmental agencies with supporting policies and to establish sponsorship associations, which are perhaps part of corporations with the sole purpose of supporting such artistic efforts. It is necessary to share the cost of artworks that do not have a price tag, nor offer any immediately recognizable practical good. The value of such work is more readily available when the public nature of art is expanded. Additionally in exhibition, I think it is important to increase the art historic value of especially excellent artworks and to promote these and to make conditions for them to be collected by the national museums as public assets.

Independent curator and writer Yang Eunhee lives in Seoul, South Korea. She wrote her doctorate “On Kawara’s Nomadic Mind: Autobiography of a Citizen of the World” in art history at the City University of New York (CUNY). While she lived in New York for 11 years, she curated exhibitions for spaces such as Dumbo Art Center and Gallery Korea, lectured in colleges and wrote essays for art magazines. After completing her Ph.D., she returned to Seoul in 2004. Since then she has been actively writing and curating. In 2005 she curated Conjunction Points, for the Gwangju Arts & Cultural Council. In 2008 she was named the main commissioner for the 2009 Incheon Women Artists’ Biennale. She also curated the show Close Encounter (2010) at the Jeju Museum of Art, and was a guest curator for the Brain Factory in 2011. More recently she curated Uneasy Fever: 4 Korean Women Photographers for the online journal Trans Asia Photography (TAP) in the spring 2012 issue. Her book New York, Art and the City (Random House Korea, Seoul), originally published in 2007 was re-released as in revised edition, in 2010. Also in 2007 Yang translated Ideas in Art (JRP, Seoul) by Robert C. Morgan. As well she is a frequent contributor to Art in Culture, Public Art and Monthly Art, and has written for such publications as Journal of Contemporary Art Studies,Art AsiaPacific, and Art in ASIA. Yang also teaches courses on contemporary art at universities in Korea.

I was fortunate to meet Yang in 2009 when I was hired by the magazine SPACE to interview artists participating in the Incheon Women Artist’s Biennale for which Yang was the main commissioner. Yang is straightforward and sensitive on issues of gender here in Korea and around the globe; and creating a more global context in which the Incheon Women Artists’ Biennale can operate has been a focus for her since we first met time. When I sat down with Yang in the winter of 2012 I was most interested in talking to her about the status and condition of Korean women in general, and more specifically Korean women artists.

The following interview questions, which where answered via email, are based on the conversation we had in January 2012.

Julia Marsh: The International Women Artists Biennale (IWAB) has been developing for nearly 10 years. What are its future prospects, given there has been turmoil surrounding its purpose and function.

Yang Eunhee: This biennale is an exhibition system that was developed by the female artists in the Incheon area. Therefore, it is a matter of what kind of will they have and where they will lead this system. This system has been successful during the past 8 years and now has many sponsors. Still, the current situation is difficult due to the political environment, so I hope that maybe these issues can be resolved by the politicians. In essence, these present difficulties will not cause this biennale to disappear, and moreover the committee won’t let that happen. It will continued, even if it is in a scaled down format.

JM: Although the IWAB is an international exhibit, its roots are in a regional group of artist. Is that origin helpful to its progress or a hindrance to its legitimacy in the eyes of the global art world?

YE: I don’t think the global art world dominates the local scene. The global art scene would not exist if there were no local art scenes. I think the “location” has a huge influence on artists’ works and it makes their reason for being tangible.

Because IWAB was created by the female artists in the Incheon area it has the power to appeal to female artists in many other countries, in fact its power, having this starting point has been proven by the past history of IWAB. Female artists in Greece, Iran, Indonesia and Thailand could empathize with the meaning of this biennale quickly, and therefore participated. Moreover, for female artists from developing countries there are not that many exhibition opportunities.

JM: What is the value of the IWAB to Korean artist and global audiences?

YE: The competition between countries and the system paralleled in the commercialization of art we find in many biennales are some of the biggest drawbacks. IWAB is a system made for the female artists who are disregarded in these clashes. Yet IWAB sets up another confrontation of sexual politics; however, a biennale cannot be a utopia, so the greatest value of it would be the fact that IWAB takes care of a realm the other biennales chose not to fulfill.

JM: Can you assess the conditions of women in general in Korean, but also female art professionals in terms of equality, treatment, and respect?

YE: There are several statistics about the circumstances of Korean females today of. Women enter college at a rate of 80.5 percent (2010) and pass the national exams, such as the bar exam, civil service exam and foreign service exams, where equality is guaranteed, at a rate of 42, 44.7 and 60 percent (2010), respectively. But in terms of general employment the participation rate of females in the workforce is less tan 50 percent and the pay rate is only 66.9 percent of what male salaries are in similar age groups and for working hours. These statistics also show that female workers are likely to be working in temporary jobs rather than in the permanent positions.

Yet there is an exception. The percentage of female members of the National Assembly has increased from 13.7 to 15.7 percent. This is due to each party’s political consideration on proportional representation of assembly seats. If there were no such consideration, the situation would be still more disparate.

Also in the arts, women hold a large majority of the positions. The number of well-educated females is increasing, and yet most of them are still temporary employees. In the competition between men and women for the limited number of permanent jobs, it seems the females have an advantage due to the fact that they simply outnumber men; on the contrary it looks like men are protected due to their low numbers in this profession. Recently, major art gallery and museums hired females for the top positions. I hope that is not the one-time deal, but the beginning of progressive changes.

JM: Moreover, what are the obstacles to women’s equality in Korea?

YE: I think complete equality is a utopia. Nevertheless, we should build a more female-friendly environment than what we have now. First of all, for this to happen, it is crucial to believe that women must take the lead to make it happen, but it is hard to find that kind of thinking in young women today. It seems they are too busy fulfilling the proscribed social necessities to have any room left for introspection about the factors that control their overall conditions. The major obstacle to this change is the authority of the system, which makes younger women into passive laborers, and causes them to be frustrated because they think their failure is due to their lack of ability.

Lately “the equal society” or “just society” has been the topic in South Korea. But in the process of discussing this topic, only the problem of social class is an issue, and the status of women can hardly be found in the dialog. To that extent, the voices of feminists are buried and not considered as a part of the press coverage. Especially after low birth rates became an issue, rather than creating a better environment for women in general, the direction of the discourse is to reform the environment for nurturing children, or so to say making a policy for motherhood. Meanwhile the problems faced by women in this sense are suppressed.

JM: Last year you curated an online photo exhibit Uneasy Fever: 4 Korean Women Photographers, which focuses on images that stress or underscore the pressures of domestic life in Korea. Can you talk about the experience and about the works you included? Do you feel now having worked on something ephemeral, that this type of exhibition will ever have the same impact as an exhibition in the real?

YE: It was the special exhibition commissioned by Trans-Asia Photography Review, opened in April, 2012. After the request, while researching it, I came to see the changes experienced by Korean women in the several Korean female photographers’ works. Bek Ji-Soon and Kim Oksun are already well-known artists, but Lee Sun-Min and Shin Eunkyung were introduced specifically for this subject. In their photographs, they show the disappearing of the obedient culture: to husband, the mother-daughter relationship of middle class in the new city, a Korean woman who married a foreigner and a single woman confronting marriage culture, all while presenting a cross section of Korea, these artists are clearly reflect the condition women face in the meantime. It was an opportunity for me to reevaluate the society I live in, too.

I think online exhibition is positive in that it can minimize the material costs. Nowadays many online art magazines are published, and have growing popularity, in the place of declining offline editions. Its merit is the accessibility to the global readers, with the less time and budget. Trans-Asia Photography Review is one such online magazine, and already has many subscribers interested in the field of photography. So the magazine understands well the merits of being online and therefore planning an online exhibition, as a part of the magazine, was natural for them. It seems in the distant future, there will be more of this kind of magazine and exhibition. Yet it doesn’t mean the offline exhibitions will become extinct. I want to emphasize that the form of an exhibition functions as a frame to show certain ideas; and that because of this in the future I believe there will be more diverse forms of exhibition than there are now.

This past winter in the duplex structure of One and J. Gallery three artists working in different media, including easel and mural painting, photography and video installation, were brought together by curator Kyung Min Lee. Due to the differences in media, form and subject, few things seemed to connect their works at the first glance; however, the

exhibition title: We are Just Bits, suggested a shared theme: art concerning perception of the visual and signs of the digitalized multimedia era. In turn, as one moves through the exhibit, these concerns can be read in each artist’s works. Eunsun Lee’s mural painting and digital photographic prints seemed to invoke the “bits” of painting as the formal structures involved in illusion and materiality, while Kyungwoo Han directed the audience’s attention toward

dematerialization in the digital era. The imagery of “bits,” however, is simultaneously actualized and abstracted in Taeyoon Kim’s video tableaus. Kim’s works have special significance because they succeed in grasping contemporary art’s perennial concerns with the immanent issues of material and form. Kim’s work implies that art practices needs to be concern with both intrinsic forms and expanded concepts. This combination can sometimes go beyond a mixture to a synthesis. Abstractly, when forms are interpreted as visual signs the signification of works of art operates on both internal and external features in a structural system, which still holds ambivalence in its synthesis.

So, however painterly Taeyoon Kim’s video installation Six Points Evolution (2012) may appear they are formalist; strongly based in a confined set of visual structures and compositional rules. Lines, colors, patterns, directions, rotations, and overlap, are all under the strict control of the artist’s detailed and meticulous timing of the coordinating configurations he has set in his vector values. However much these screen saver-like video installations give the impression of being merely abstract modulations in an animated scene, their formalist and modernist features are only one side of their content. The other side is their semiotic implications. The sources of Kim’s digits are directly transcoded from archival web material, and thus his “bits,” modulated in the video, are actually representations of collective and discursive practices emerging at the micro-level of social structures in everyday linguistic exchange. This two-fold direction contains critical contemporary feature that reject the author’s sole creative subjectivity on one hand, and diminishes the possibility of sliding into an empty cynicism of language-based art.

Whether or not Kim considered formal elements simply as sources of visual pleasure, these elements reflect the sign systems embedded in social representation. In actuality, it is exemplified in his treatment of visual forms, such as the repetitive series of slashes and seemingly random patterns controlled by 0s or 1s in Spaced Oddity (2013), which mutually overlap and separate. In considering the structure of the display, the falling bits constantly collapsing and receding into the bottom edge always move vertically, preventing the audience from viewing what is depicted as merely or only painterly. Because the “image” moves to the bottom, as in the calligraphic tradition, the audience also then “reads” the work due to this directional cue.

Kim Taeyoon, Spaced Oddity, video loops, variable size (2013)

Going back to the matter of the immanent form, it is generally thought that for abstract painting, the dialectic of the surface and space depends on achieving a tension that defeats its static condition; while video relies on tension achieved by taming its superfluous elements, such as such as flicker and the facile movement given off by the media’s temporal characteristics that overcome its kinetic nature. From this point of view, Kim’s video successfully integrates the static and contemplative tensions, especially in that Kim’s palimpsest of a web archive is a carefully composed work of confined elements achieving a vibrant effect.

The motivation of an art practice can be derived from several places, such as formal, socio-cultural, and theoretical positions. If Kim’s work solely focused on one of these interests, his work could simply be a display of the capabilities of media technology, or a boring societal poll using a bunch of tweets; however, by not omitting any of these positions the quality and interest in Kim’s work are obviously augmented. That seemingly opposite features can be embraced in a subtle and ambivalent manner, which is of concern in the contemporary interest in unifying diachronic axes of form, art history, and immanent issues of art with synchronic axes of societal interest, the sense of contemporaneity, and materialist recognition. Meaning that fervent activism should go with critical reason. Still, its potential might yet be grasped in what once were thought not reconcilable: visual representation, linguistic textuality, and the politics of representation. The intersection of these in Kim’s work defies their easy appearances and weighs heavily within its structure.